With elections coming on Sunday, things are not looking good for the opposition, despite what you may have heard earlier this week. Results released recently by an opposition-leaning pollster, Závecz Research, claimed that the race is now neck and neck. The difference between the governing alliance Fidesz-KDNP and the “unified” opposition, according to this poll, is within the margin of error: supposedly – among all voters, 41 percent of voters support PM Orbán’s alliance, while 39 percent would cast a ballot for the opposition.
The opposition jumped all over it, and the international press and Twitterati dutifully began to churn, deliberately building the expectation that this is going to be a close one.
Careful, however, with what you read on Twitter. If you look closely at the recent polls, a significantly different picture emerges.
Take a look at this: The difference between the two sides grew as wide as 6 percent even in a poll conducted by Medián, a generally left-leaning pollster, and prepared for left-liberal weekly HVG. And the latest Zavecz poll, released just yesterday, shows Fidesz-KDNP at 50 and the opposition at 46 – among decided voters. These results illustrate my point. Even according to their own polls, they are falling behind.
According to Nézőpont Institute, the governing Fidesz-KDNP alliance holds a comfortable 5 percent lead ahead of the opposition coalition. In their most recent report, the pollster concluded that PM Orbán’s alliance will garner 47 percent of the votes, compared to 42 percent for the unified opposition list.
But not only that, check out the undecideds. Nézőpont found a significant difference in the ratio of undecided voters in both camps: 41 percent of the left-liberal-far-right coalition’s voters remain undecided, while this figure for Fidesz-KDNP sympathizers stands as low as 4 percent. Moreover, 44 percent of leftist voters doubt that Márki-Zay would make a better prime minister than Viktor Orbán.
Meanwhile, in a survey conducted last week, Társadalomkutató found that the gap between the two blocs is, in fact, 11 percent, with 52 percent and 41 percent of voters supporting Fidesz-KDNP and the opposition, respectively.
In another poll conducted by the IDEA Institute, voter support for Fidesz-KDNP soared to 50 percent among decided voters since the onset of the war in Ukraine, while the opposition camp fell to just 43 percent.
I predict that Prime Minister Orbán and his governing alliance will secure a comfortable lead in Sunday’s parliamentary elections because they are running on the government’s record: strategic calm and promoting peace during a time of war, creating jobs, increasing wages, lowering utility costs, supporting families, and, ultimately, standing up for Hungary’s national interests every step of the way.